ERROR: Can't open/parse /etc/clamav/freshclam.conf

[psoderlund]

Running the command you suggested worked. Now I am a bit confused, why did that work? Should I change the owner and group of freshclam? Or is it the user and group its run as that matters?
As for why I need it, I don't per se, its now become company policy to have AV on every system.

[SeijiSensei]

-rwx------ 1 clamav adm 939 Jul 19 13:11 /etc/clamav/freshclam.conf*

This file is owned by clamav in group adm. Running freshclam with that user and group enables it to read the freshclam.conf file. (Actually the group ownership doesn't matter here.)

You could set up a task in /etc/crontab that would run that command nightly

31 4 * * * clamav /path/to/freshclam >> /var/log/freshclam.log 2>&1

would run the freshclam program as user clamav every morning at 4:31 am. Replace "/path/to" with the actual path. /usr/bin/freshclam perhaps? Its output will be written to /var/log/freshclam.log. The "2>&1" item directs any errors written to the SYSERR device to the log file along with the normal program output. You might need to create the freshclam.log file manually to start since it needs to be owned by user clamav.

cd /var/log
sudo touch freshclam.log
sudo chown clamav:adm freshclam.log

[jedi123]

Have you ever tried it this way to update ?

sudo systemctl stop clamav-freshclam
sudo freshclam
sudo systemctl start clamav-freshclam
clamscan '/what-ever- the-directory-you need-scanned'

This worked for me as an update.